


Your Average Coffee Shop AU

by MiloFindsSatisfaction



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: 10 years or so after events of show, AU, Don't know him, Gen, Happy Ending, Phantom Planet Who?, Please don't be super harsh, SO, This is the first fic I've ever made, but like, enjoy, it's dark, so?, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 00:31:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17612027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiloFindsSatisfaction/pseuds/MiloFindsSatisfaction
Summary: Ten years after Danny ran away from home, he meets someone he'd thought he'd never see.





	Your Average Coffee Shop AU

     Danny grabbed the empty cup his coworker, Amy, had left by the cash register for him. Amy had been there even longer than Danny, and customers asked after Danny when he took sick days. He still remembered his first day at the coffee shop; he’d dropped three cups, made four wrong orders, and offended six customers. The only reason he wasn’t hired was because Amy had convinced the boss he was worth it — her argument was that he’d cleaned up the messes, quickly remade the orders, and mended relationships with the customers. She’d offered to drive Danny home, but since he didn’t have a home anymore, he’d politely declined. He was sure she knew he wasn’t eighteen, and had told his other coworkers Jasper and Hannah as much, but his (fake) ID claimed it to be true, and who could argue with documentation? Still, Amy mothered Danny as only someone who’d always wanted a kid could, hugging and kissing him constantly, making sure he and a warm winter coat and gloves before winter set in, and sharing her lunch until Danny could afford his own. Jasper and Hannah, closer to Danny’s age, offered friendship and sibling-like camaraderie. Danny appreciated it more than covering their shifts and doing simple favors could show.

     But Danny knew they’d treat him differently if he told them who he really was — a half-ghost with ghost-hunting parents from Amity Park.

     Danny read the order on the side of the cup; plain black coffee. His sister, Jazz, had always hated coffee, claiming caffeine affected developing minds. Jazz obsessed over developing minds and was always going on about some psychological effect or another. It had saved Danny’s secret many times, but after she went to college, taking his first line of defense with her, well… He should’ve known to be more careful.

     Danny filled the cup and considered his parents. There was his father, goofy and always thinking up some device to capture and torture ghosts, and his capable mother who, on too many occasions, had nearly caught and killed him — for science, of course. Though Danny often found himself homesick, wishing for the warmth and comfort of his old friends and town, he didn’t miss the constant fear of death. His new life, in New York, kept him safe.

     Danny read out the name on the cup, “Jasmine,” and placed it on the pick-up counter. Before he could turn and start on the next order, a hand knocked over Jasmine’s cup.

     “Oh, sorry!” said the woman. Danny looked up and saw —

     “Jazz?”

     The woman glanced up from where she tried to soak up the spilled coffee with her jacket and gasped. “Danny? But you’re dead!”

     “Amy?” Danny called, still staring at his sister. “I’m going to have to leave early today.”

* * *

 

     “Why didn’t you come back?” Jazz asked. She sat on a stool at Danny’s small kitchen table. Her purple coat hung on a nail Danny had hammered into his front door for that exact purpose. Danny’s coat lay in a rumpled heap on the floor.

     Danny shrugged. Jazz couldn’t see his expression as he stared at the stove, waiting for the kettle to whistle, but her extensive reading on body language told her what anyone could guess; Danny didn’t want to talk. Jazz however, had spent her twenties waiting for her little brother to come back, ghost or not, and she wanted answers.

     “We were worried about you, Danny. Sam and Tucker organized a search party of the ghost zone for you. Even Plasmius helped. They were scared, Danny. _I_ was scared.”

     The kettle screamed then, and Danny grabbed two small cups from a cupboard in the wall.

     “Mom and Dad are in jail for your _murder_ ,” Jazz said.

     Danny paused, still facing away from Jazz, his hand halfway to pouring tea in the first cup. “Good,” he said. His voice cracked with anger and hurt. “They deserved it.”

     He poured tea into the cup as Jazz asked, “Are you dead?”

     “No.” Danny placed the kettle back on the stove and turned. He placed a cup in front of Jazz and sat on the stool at the opposite side of the table, finishing half his cup in one gulp.

     Jazz turned her cup around on the table then tentatively asked, “What did they do to you?”

     Danny gazed into his tea as it swirled. “What do you think?”

     “The lab was a mess,” Jazz said. “Ectoplasm everywhere… Blood on their scalpels.” Danny hunched his shoulders as Jazz continued. “We thought they’d gone too far in a dissection and buried your body. Or thrown it in the ghost zone.”

     “Any dissection went too far,” Danny stated.

     “I meant—” Jazz began. She sighed. “When I came home for winter break and you weren’t there, the lab all but confirmed my suspicions.

     Danny sipped the last bit of tea. He put it down quietly and said, “I have a life here.”

     “You’re half dead,” Jazz responded.

     “They don’t know that.” Danny picked up his cup and spun it in his hands. “I have a job. Friends. A family.”

     “You can’t replace what you had, Danny. It’s not a healthy—”

     “Coping mechanism, I know.” He smiled at Jazz sadly. “But Mom and Dad—”

     “Are locked up. You don’t have to visit them if you don’t want to.”

     “If I’m alive, they can’t be locked up for my murder.” Danny tossed his cup in the air and watched it fall back into his lap. He repeated the process as Jazz watched too, thinking.

     “Not if they’re guilty of child abuse,” Jazz said. “Besides, your an adult now. You wouldn’t have to go near them.”

     “I still look fifteen,” Danny retorted. “Won’t people notice?”

     “Malnutrition,” Jazz suggested. “We could say they didn’t feed you leading up to when you ran off, and that you couldn’t find food for a long time after. There’s no reason not to come back.”

     There was a moment of silence as Danny tried to find a reason, and he said, “Does anyone know about Phantom?”

     “No. They know he was experimented on too, from our parents’ notes, and assume he was ‘killed’, too.” Jazz put her hand on Danny’s, keeping him from throwing his cup again. “Please come back.”

     Danny took a deep breath. “Can we stop by the coffee shop first? I want to say goodbye.”     

* * *

 

     Amy, Jasper, and Hannah hadn’t been particularly surprised when he’d revealed his parents had nearly killed him and he was going home with his sister now, especially when he mentioned that said home was in Amity Park, but they’d made sure he had all their numbers memorized in case something happened or he just needed someone to talk to. They’d threatened Jazz with legal action if she hurt him and, once they were positive he was safe, hugged him and ordered him to call every day with updates. Danny missed them already.

     “We’re here,” Jazz said. Danny glanced out the window of the passenger seat and saw the Nasty Burger sign glowing in the dark of night. “I asked Sam and Tucker to meet me here.” She unbuckled and climbed out of the car. “Coming?” she asked Danny.

     He nodded and followed her into the restaurant.

     “Danny?” someone asked from across the room.

     Danny turned and saw a woman dressed in black standing behind a table, her chair on the ground beside her.

     “You’re alive?” she asked.

     “Sam,” Danny said. To her left sat a bespeckled man with a high-tech phone in his hand, and Danny knew who he was immediately. “Tucker.”

     Jazz nudged Danny forward and he ran to his best friends, dodging waiters and tables. He paused on the opposite side of the table from them.

     “I’m back.”


End file.
